Brooklyn, March 1, 2010 - Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes today released the following statement: On September 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees. The three had been secretly videotaped by two people posing as a pimp and prostitute, who came to ACORNS Brooklyn office, seeking advice about how to purchase a house with money generated by their business. The couple later made the recording public. That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found. Contact: Jerry Schmetterer
(718) 250-2300http://www.brooklynda.org/press_releases/pr_mar_10.htm#01

Call it a Hunch, but I bet that FOX NEWS will not be reporting this story

Fox won't, but starinvestor will and he won't be happy.
Expect full, bombastic moralistic banter and more nonsense about how "the ghetto" messes everything up on his new show, "Why I Think ACORN is Evil".

Gold Member

did the Hynes report exonerate some of their officials of embezzlement and wipe away their record of slipshod management, lax oversight into dozens of its employees committing voter registration fraud over the last few years in other offices?

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Brown's report also uncovered "likely violations" of state law, including dumping 500 pages of confidential records into a dumpster, failure to file a 2007 tax return, and four instances of possible voter registration fraud by ACORN in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election, as well as other irregularities in the group's California operations. These irregularities have been referred to the appropriate authorities.
"A few ACORN members exhibited terrible judgment and highly inappropriate behavior in videotapes obtained in the investigation," Brown said. "But they didn't commit prosecutable crimes in California."

- Failure to "recruit, train and monitor its employees to ensure compliance" with state law.

- Likely violation of state civil laws designed to protect personal information when employees of the San Diego office disposed of 20,000 pages of records in a dumpster. These violations could result in private litigation if any of the victims were injured by disclosure.

- Four instances of "possible voter registration fraud in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election."

- Failure to file a 2007 state tax return, an omission the Franchise Tax Board is pursuing.

- Sloppiness in its handling of charitable assets, although no misuse of those assets was found. The California Attorney General will monitor investigations into ACORN's overall finances by the IRS and Louisiana Attorney General.

they got nailed, perhaps unfairly, by some of the same strong arm, aggressive and unpleasant tactics that they got their way with when protesting against certain lending institutions.

they were complacent, irresponsible, negligent, and slipshod...they handed their enemies the perfect opportunity to nail them...and they got nailed, by the same type of nasty tactics that all you partisans play at.

Flashy - I don't think anyone is trying to play ACORN as a victim here. We know there was some issues with voter registration, and it's common knowledge that some of the votes that were casted were fraudulent. But even if you take that into consideration, the numbers speak for themselves. You could take out all of the fraudulent or questionable votes, and the results for the election would have remained the same.

Republican opponents of ACORN attack them just based on the ideology of voter fraud. It didn't matter to them that the mass majority of the votes were legit, nor did it matter that the election results were not affected by this. They just wanted to make them examples, and keep pushing the issue so that people who didn't know the whole story would be lead to believe that ACORN was the reason Obama won and McCain lost.

Is voter fraud wrong? Of course it is. Should ACORN be held accountable for that? Most definitely. Was their crime so detrimental to the outcome of the 2008 Election that it invalidates the outcome? Of course not. That's why all of this noise about ACORN just got to the level of foolishness. Some people just can't accept the fact that Obama won, and will use anything to make it seem as if the election was just stolen from them. When in reality, Republicans just didn't know how to properly cater to the American people... especially minorities.

- Failure to "recruit, train and monitor its employees to ensure compliance" with state law.

- Likely violation of state civil laws designed to protect personal information when employees of the San Diego office disposed of 20,000 pages of records in a dumpster. These violations could result in private litigation if any of the victims were injured by disclosure.

- Four instances of "possible voter registration fraud in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election."

- Failure to file a 2007 state tax return, an omission the Franchise Tax Board is pursuing.

- Sloppiness in its handling of charitable assets, although no misuse of those assets was found. The California Attorney General will monitor investigations into ACORN's overall finances by the IRS and Louisiana Attorney General.

ACORN announced that it is closing its operations nationwide today. While a successor to ACORN in California called ACCE emphasizes that it is no longer part of ACORN, the Attorney General's report notes that ACCE is "run by the same people, raising concerns about its ability to cure the defects in the organization." The report notes that the Attorney General will closely scrutinize ACCE's operations.

as i said, just because the Hynes report exonerated them of *breaking the law* in the O'Keefe case, does not erase or exonerate them on the numerous other charges, deficiencies, faults and flaws which they are rife with.

ignorance, incompetence, sloppiness, and negligence are not excuses for their behavior in the past...

even such a supporter of Acorn as Rachel Maddow said as much when she said that while the vindication in the O'Keefe case was just and fair, "This is not meant to excuse what ACORN has done wrong in the past"

Gold Member

I'M still waiting for that investigation into those GOP campaign workers who fraudulently tried to disseminate misinformation on Election Day to voters, including threats of deportation made to legalized Hispanic citizens of the United States. Notice they don't want to keep harping on any of that shit.

- Failure to "recruit, train and monitor its employees to ensure compliance" with state law.

- Likely violation of state civil laws designed to protect personal information when employees of the San Diego office disposed of 20,000 pages of records in a dumpster. These violations could result in private litigation if any of the victims were injured by disclosure.

- Four instances of "possible voter registration fraud in San Diego in connection with the 2008 election."

- Failure to file a 2007 state tax return, an omission the Franchise Tax Board is pursuing.

- Sloppiness in its handling of charitable assets, although no misuse of those assets was found. The California Attorney General will monitor investigations into ACORN's overall finances by the IRS and Louisiana Attorney General.

ACORN announced that it is closing its operations nationwide today. While a successor to ACORN in California called ACCE emphasizes that it is no longer part of ACORN, the Attorney General's report notes that ACCE is "run by the same people, raising concerns about its ability to cure the defects in the organization." The report notes that the Attorney General will closely scrutinize ACCE's operations.

as i said, just because the Hynes report exonerated them of *breaking the law* in the O'Keefe case, does not erase or exonerate them on the numerous other charges, deficiencies, faults and flaws which they are rife with.

ignorance, incompetence, sloppiness, and negligence are not excuses for their behavior in the past...

even such a supporter of Acorn as Rachel Maddow said as much when she said that while the vindication in the O'Keefe case was just and fair, "This is not meant to excuse what ACORN has done wrong in the past"

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I never said they were a perfectly run organization. For one, I think they should do a better job of finding vote recruiters who won't try to scam them. But nowhere in there did you see the organization encouraging fraudulent vote registrations, or guilty of submitting them as legit.

Having said that, the organization does far more good than harm, and they've been targeted due to their role in helping the poor with housing and voting. Many people have tried to smear them because they would prefer their poor disenfranchised. The main story that brought people down on them turns to be by a dipshit who creatively edited the video to make ACORN look like they were doing something illegal. Most of the voter registration cases were brought to the attention of authorities by ACORN itself.

ACORN here in Indiana paid temps to gather registrations and paid them for each regisistration they gathered. In accordance with Indiana law they turned these over to the Sec. of State and even separated out those of dubious validity. So the SOS, gearing up for his run for gov, decides to prosecute them for fraud. The case is thrown out after he gets his "tough on ACORN" headlines and the matter dies down. Now he's wasting more state money to sue over healthcare, the piece of shit.

Gold Member

Flashy - I don't think anyone is trying to play ACORN as a victim here. We know there was some issues with voter registration, and it's common knowledge that some of the votes that were casted were fraudulent. But even if you take that into consideration, the numbers speak for themselves. You could take out all of the fraudulent or questionable votes, and the results for the election would have remained the same.

Republican opponents of ACORN attack them just based on the ideology of voter fraud. It didn't matter to them that the mass majority of the votes were legit, nor did it matter that the election results were not affected by this. They just wanted to make them examples, and keep pushing the issue so that people who didn't know the whole story would be lead to believe that ACORN was the reason Obama won and McCain lost.

Is voter fraud wrong? Of course it is. Should ACORN be held accountable for that? Most definitely. Was their crime so detrimental to the outcome of the 2008 Election that it invalidates the outcome? Of course not. That's why all of this noise about ACORN just got to the level of foolishness. Some people just can't accept the fact that Obama won, and will use anything to make it seem as if the election was just stolen from them. When in reality, Republicans just didn't know how to properly cater to the American people... especially minorities.

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i know what you are saying VB, and i agree with your assertions

i don't disagree about them not committing voter fraud...i do not believe it was anywhere near as serious as it was made out to be by many on the right...but my point is this constant deflection of issues by the right and the left, a constant tit for tat, when a liberal organization is corrupt, sloppy, negligent, incompetent, the right goes crazy trying to tar it, and vice versa when a conservative organization does the same.

it is a never-ending cycle between these two fringes..."he did it first", "they are so bad", "see, they lied about us!"...and a litany of other constant complaints, as played out by the far left and far right on a daily basis...the constant holier than thou B.S....the never-ending finger-pointing...the "we're not as bad as they are"...

all they do, is constantly bitch, lie, distort, and whine about each other, and they are both just awful, on every level.

they can never take responsibility for their own B.S. without pointing to the other side, and this is a constant cycle.

and once again, the rest of us sit here in the middle rolling our eyes while the monkeys fling shit at each other, covering the rest of us.

Gold Member

What my post was about is that ACORN was exonerated in any wrongdoing in the Stunt with the videotaped pimp etc.......

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"Exonerated" is an exaggeration in my opinion. Just because they didn't find evidence of a "crime" doesn't mean they didn't betray their trust, squander funds, mismanage, and act in a morally reprehensible manner. I'm very disappointed that anyone would defend them in the face of the videotape we all know so well. It's when we go "a bridge too far" that liberals are ridiculed. All of us should hold ACORN responsible for their actions. Stuff like this makes me want to register Repulican. OK, just kidding about that last part, but still.......

In actuality it was very disturbing that ACORN's detractors ,including those in Congress, relied on O'Keefe's manufactured stories to justify condemnation of ACORN instead of awaiting and relying on the investigation's outcome which proved O'Keefe's tales to be false and cleared ACORN of any criminal wrongdoing.

"Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday <March 1,2010> cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.
"They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source.
O'Keefe and Giles - who visited ACORN offices in several cities, including its Brooklyn headquarters - stirred controversy when they posted the videos on their Web site.

Reaction at ACORN, which is in the process of reorganizing and is struggling to re-establish its financing, was subdued.
"Acorn is gratified that the DA has concluded something we knew all along," ACORN lawyer Arthur Schwartz said, adding it was "unfortunate" the O'Keefe and Giles used "subterfuge to convince congress and the media to vilify an organization that didn't deserve it."